Stephen Kijack’s Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed is a striking love letter to both Rock Hudson and the later years of the golden age of Hollywood cinema.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 3, 2024

Meticulously assembled from film clips, news footage and interviews with former co-stars and intimates, Stephen Kijak’s documentary All That Heaven Allowed is everything you already knew about the Hollywood actor Rock Hudson and probably a little more.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 8, 2023

Taking a flaws-and-all exposé approach, the film isn’t afraid to open the door of his closet so we can really see the man whose death had as much of a legacy as his life.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 9, 2023

For anyone interested in that golden era of Hollywood, it's compelling stuff.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 27, 2023

A fitting, arguably overdue tribute to a movie star who somehow managed to serve the expectations of Hollywood while simultaneously defying its demands about how its stars should live their lives. Talk about a role model.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 27, 2023

The disconnect between Hudson’s lifelong image as the housewife’s Adonis and the reality of his closeted life as a gay man was either the greatest performance of his career or the great tragedy of his life, according to Kijak’s engrossing documentary.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 23, 2023

A bit one-note in scope but compellingly made.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 23, 2023

Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed is required viewing and a necessary education for anyone who wants to know how progress often comes alongside tragedy.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 23, 2023

Stephen Kijak makes a sleek and revealing film, piecing together fascinating archive footage with interviews from those who knew the leading man best.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 20, 2023

It’s an absorbing, bittersweet film that paints a major film icon in a different light. You wonder, though, how much Hudson would have appreciated his carefully-guarded secrets being revealed in this way.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 20, 2023

This is a perfectly watchable film, though it perhaps could have delved deeper into the contradictions.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 18, 2023

...a documentary well worth commending to anyone interested in Hollywood hypocrisy, and Hudson emerges as a somewhat torn if not tragic figure who never got the chance to be himself...

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 18, 2023

Hudson's story is a pivotal element in the bigger picture of cinema and queer history, with an added angle on American culture that is rarely discussed. All of this makes the film remarkably important.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 3, 2023

Despite slightly neglecting Hudson's acting ability in favour of focusing on his secret, the documentary makes for a sensitive and often tragic account of the man behind the movie star.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 29, 2023

In this way, the film feels more authentically queer than something more traditionally reverent might have. It's an attempted reclamation of Hudson's story from the sad silence of the closet.

| Aug 5, 2023

Clever editing and illuminating interviews elevate this documentary on the double life and heartening legacy of a closeted Hollywood icon.

| Original Score: 74/100 | Jul 27, 2023

One is left with the impression that despite a life in what one commentator here calls “the shared misery of the closet,” Rock Hudson led a largely contented existence.

| Original Score: B | Jul 12, 2023

The documentary succeeds in giving Hudson a human form rather than simply a masculine face that people loved. Or a person with a terrible disease that far too many ended up deriding.

| Jul 7, 2023

Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed is an undeniably poignant love letter to Hudson and the life he was forced to live.

| Jul 6, 2023

Stephen Kijay and his interview subjects want to reclaim his [Hudson's] identity and what he should be remembered for. It’s a poignant and must-watch film as the history should not be forgotten.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 3, 2023